needing good explanation on what to do. HELP NEEDED

Question

My Friend

 Sometimes I feel all thin 

inside Insufficient; small;

 I feel when people look at me 

They don’t see me at all.

 I feel that all my beauty’s lost 

On cold, indifferent eyes 

And offering what I want to give 

Would only be unwise. 

But then a friend will greet me

 and my inner life will bloom

 It only takes but one kind word

 To sweep away the gloom!

I get that person is sad and crying out for a friend correct???

but I don't understand how I to answer the below can explain please ?

Identify the structures in the poem (repetition, different voices or themes in stanzas?

Identify the poetic devices in use (simile, metaphor, alliteration, personification, onomatopoeia, assonance?

Answer 1

Hello! When it comes to analyzing poetry, patterns are very important, and that can be a part of looking for the structure. Notice where the rhyme scheme is--do the first and second lines rhyme while the third and fourth rhyme with a different sound? The rhyme scheme is AABB. Do the first and third lines rhyme while the second and fourth lines rhyme differently? That's ABAB. Repeating rhyming patterns could be significant, as could the repetition of certain words or ideas. For example, one theme I saw in this poem was the theme of outward beauty v inward beauty, and what that beauty means--each stanza has a moment where the narrator mentions something about their beauty--inward or outward--or how the world perceives them. I recommend finding the dominant ideas of each stanza, and looking through the others to see if they repeat any. One thing that is important with poetry is also looking for breaks in patterns. Does the rhyme scheme ever change? Does the rhythm of the poem? Even the structure of a poem on the page can matter--are the lines the same size or indented weirdly, and do all of the stanzas have the same number of lines and rhymes?

Voice, in my opinion, can sometimes go with content. If you are meant to find the different characters in a poem, then you have to pay extra close attention to see if the poem switches perspectives or stays in the head of the narrator. I also recommend finding a main "topic" or theme for each paragraph if you are confused about the content and flow of a poem.

Similes and metaphors are indirect/direct comparisons--the difference between "you are like the sun" and "you are the sun." Try and find comparisons within the poem of a person or thing to another object, and figure out from there whether you think the comparison is more direct or not. This can be related to personification, which gives an object living qualities--such as "the sun stretched across the sky like a lazy cat." Onomatopeia are words like "BOOM" or "gurgle" that sound like the sound they describe. Alliteration and assonance are very similar--alliteration is the repetition of the sound at the beginning of the word (Sally's seashells) and assonance is the repetition of whole parts of words, such as "revelation and station." Look on a word-by-word level throughout the poem---I recommend looking for like words next to each other with similar letters/pronunciations, etc.

Hope this helps!